Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Churches Sue Calif. ObamaCare: Forced Abortion $$

Three churches are suingMichelle Rouillard, the director of the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC), in federal court for First Amendment violations of requiring churches to pay for surgical abortions via the ObamaCare-forced employer health insurance. Last year, the DMHC reclassified abortion as a “basic health service,” thus mandating all heath insurance coverage to include elective abortion as if it's a medical ailment.

“Because Obamacare requires health insurance coverage, and the California mandate requires abortion coverage in any health plan, these churches are truly left with no way to opt out of paying for abortions. What’s absurd, though, is that the same government that rightfully does not require California churches to pay for contraceptive coverage requires them to pay for elective abortion coverage.”-- Jeremiah Galus, Litigation Staff Counsel (for the churches) of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

The California DMHC stated in an August 2014 letter to seven insurance companies that they were required to include elective abortions in their health plans with no exceptions. The letter came in response to complaints after Santa Clara University and Loyola Marymount University excluded elective abortion from their employee insurance policies on religious grounds.

The letter cites California’s Constitution and the 1975 Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act, which “requires the provision of basic health care services” in justification of their abortion mandate.

The lawsuit states that the churches have been searching for a way to “provide health insurance coverage to their employees in a way that does not also cause them to pay for abortions,” as they believe that “abortion kills an innocent human life.”

The lawsuit also charges that the DMHC “realizing that Plaintiffs and others have sincerely held religious beliefs against paying for or providing coverage for abortion,” still “encouraged the insurers to hide these changes by informing them that they may ‘omit any mention of coverage for abortion services in health plan documents.’”

ADF filed the lawsuit, Foothill Church v. Rouillard, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch.

Last year, ADF and Life Legal Defense Foundation filed formal complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services against DMHC regarding California’s mandate and its violation of federal conscience law. Those came on the heels of a complaint filed directly with DMHC, which responded by affirming its decision to force all plans to cover all abortions without any explanation as to how that decision squares with the Constitution and contrasting federal law.

The complaint explains, “DMHC is an arm of the State of California and purports to be interpreting and applying the law of California, a state that receives billions of taxpayer dollars…. California accepted those funds with full knowledge of the requirements of the Weldon Amendment, but it has chosen to ignore this law. The need to remedy this discrimination is urgent because it is immediately depriving Complainants of a health plan that omits elective abortions.”

“The DMHC created this abortion mandate in response to political pressure from the abortion lobby,” said LLDF Legal Director Catherine Short. “DMHC would have us believe that, while the Legislature exempted these churches from the state’s contraceptive coverage mandate, it nonetheless intended to force them to cover all abortions under the rubric of ‘basic health care.’ This move was a pure power play, and we trust that the Department of Health and Human Services will take the necessary steps to bring the state into compliance with federal law.”

“Forcing a church to be party to elective abortion is one of the utmost-imaginable assaults on our most fundamental American freedoms,” said ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox. “California is flagrantly violating the federal law that protects employers from being forced into having abortion in their health insurance plans. No state can blatantly ignore federal law and think that it should continue to receive taxpayer money.”

Evidence that Rouillard was specifically targeting churches, the complaint says, was demonstrated by the fact that the mandate “does not apply to health benefit plans offered by the California Public Employees Retirement System and other policies.”

“Defendant imposed the mandate with full knowledge that it would coerce religious employers and churches like plaintiffs to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

[The complaint] cites violations of the First Amendment and creates a pages-long list of damages, including chilling religious exercise, a government-imposed coercion regarding religious beliefs and exposing the plaintiffs them to damages and penalties.

“Defendant issued the mandate to suppress the religious exercise of plaintiffs and other similarly situated churches and religious employers,” it states.